


doggerland

by FoxGlade



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alien Culture, Gen, SPACE CRIME, and SPACE POLITICS, so much alien culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 08:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4998421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxGlade/pseuds/FoxGlade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He misses Dimension 52.</p><p>(or; an excerpt from the adventures of Stanford Pines, inter-dimensional space criminal)</p>
            </blockquote>





	doggerland

**Author's Note:**

> LOOK. this was not supposed to have an actual plot im so sorry. this also wasnt supposed to turn into some horrific mashup of five different scifi franchises. i havent tagged any of them bcause no knowledge of any of them is required to read this story, but. if you know what any / all of them are, i probably love you.
> 
> title from doggerland by disparition, which is a bit of a "ford's inter-dimensional travels" theme song for me. i cant even blame shena for this tbh. (i can probably blame micha tho)

Dimension 52 is a wonderful place.

Specifically, the Siddiqui system, with its string of merchant planets and its bustling culture. Ford had arrived there some five years after falling through the portal, hitching a (technically illegal) lift on an inter-dimensional freight transport. After so many years spent fighting for the barest scraps of survival, it was… culture shock. To say the least.

“Haven’t seen you in these winds, lately,” Driss remarked as xhi inspected the rifle. Ford shifted from one foot to the other.

“I’ve been travelling,” he said shortly. Driss made a fluttering sort of movement – a somewhat equivalent to a noncommittal hum.

“This should be fixed up within the lightset,” xhi said eventually. He’d been out of the system long enough to forget the time measurement system, but before he could think on it, Driss continued, “You sticking around, or just breezing?”

It _was_ good to be back in a familiar dimension, someplace he knew people, a place where only minor fringe groups and a few dissatisfied acquaintances were trying to kill him. “I might stay for a while,” he said, tapping a finger to the travel permit in his pocket. It was good for one Ben Hassi span, so he had time.

“Find yourself at my root-stay,” Driss said, tone persuasive. “My ‘chids are always happy to see you.”

Siddari home cooking was particularly delicious, if not very filling, and Driss prided xhirself on xhir skill. Even so… “I have something to take care of. Another time?” Ford said, before backing away with the particular arm flick that constituted a goodbye on this world. Driss flicked back, and then Ford was once again swallowed by the crowd of the marketplace.

When he’d first arrived, scarred and alone and with nerves constantly fraying at the slightest provocation, he’d spent an entire day – a lightset, they called it, slightly shorter than an Earth day but with a matching darkset that was three times as long – slinking through the crowds, frantically trying to catalogue every species he saw, seeing humans sometimes but never quite trusting enough to approach them. Driss, he hadn’t met until his third visit, and hadn’t that been an adventure, trying to explain how he came to be suspended upside down from the vaporator outside xhir root-stay.

He broke from his thoughts at the flash of bright blue and yellow appearing in the corner of his eye. Over the heads of the crowd, the Andalite stood on an observation platform, eye stalks twisting to track the movement of the crowd constantly. Wrapped in an oversized Wey-Yu jacket, they held a PADD in their weak, spindly-looking arms, and their main eyes focused on it intently, occasionally tapping away. They would have appeared as any other low-level security monitor if not for the thickly muscled tail held at attention above their shoulder, ending in a deadly blade that glinted in the pale light of the late sun.

Intimidating, Ford thought. He flipped up the collar of his coat and slipped back into the crowd. Not intimidating enough.

\---

 In a system made up of five planets, hundreds of sentient species, and thousands of languages, “lost in translation” was a permanent state of being.

“Pronoun?” the administrator droned. Her utter lack of interest was somewhat soothing Ford’s panic, although it didn’t stop him from continually glancing around, certain that any moment, the Skrull agents he’d been dodging for the last two dimensions would burst in.

“Pronouns?” he repeated. “He. Uh, he, him, his?” The processing room was full up, packed with a dizzying amount of species, and the Skrull could be any of them, and it was only a matter of time-

The administrator hummed. “Those pronouns are not in our identification system,” she told him, in a tone that sounded like the apathetic neighbor of sympathy. “Please choose the closest equivalent in Bocce, Aaribi, or Standard.”

Ford blinked. The Bocce in this dimension was similar enough to the version spoken in the previous few dimensions he’d been in, but apparently, it differed in regards to pronouns. “Uh…” A muffled _thunk_ as the door to the processing room swung open. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead, and he finally blurted, “They- they, them and their.”

The administrator didn’t blink – just tapped the pronouns into the databank, and a moment later, a travel permit slid from the terminal on Ford’s side of the glass. “Enjoy your time in the Siddiqui system,” she said, but Ford was already snatching the permit and heading for the exit.

\---

“Wey-Yu’s been makin’ big progress on inter-dimensional scanning,” Cruiser said, voice as harsh as ever from the constant smoke drifting through the spice district. Ford didn’t take the bait – just continued measuring the individual bags of drops. “Seems like somethin’ a person of your habits’d get all-fired interested in.”

“Seems like,” Ford agreed, but added nothing more. Finally, Cruiser sighed and grabbed Ford roughly by the upper arm, staring him down. Ford gritted his teeth and said nothing.

“Listen, puhn yoh,” Cruiser began, sarcasm staining his voice, “I’m out here tryna do you a solid, so it ain’t the brightest idea to get smart about it.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it was in your nature,” Ford shoots back, then winces when the barbs under the skin of Cruiser’s palms flare out, puncturing through his coat.

“Don’t act like you’re better than me, bunh dahn,” Cruiser growled. “You’re just some moonbrainer on the dodge, and the only place you’ll ever have here is as a jien huo!” Ford snarled in anger, the words making him struggle against the hand holding him in place, but Cruiser didn’t even react. “So you can cut the go shi and listen up, because I’ll only say it once.”

“Kuh we,” Ford spat, and Cruiser laughed in his face, sharp teeth flashing.

“So I’ve been told.” The hand around his arm disappeared, and he stood clutching the sluggishly bleeding area, breathing hard, fighting the panic rising in him. “The Lamaalem markets, on Ben Hassi, you know them?”

Driss, Ford thought, slightly dizzy. The weapons repair stall, write next to the booth that billowed with steam and the overpowering smell of plomeek soup.

“One of the regular monitors in rotation is a grasser - an Andalite, you know ‘em?” Ford nodded slightly. “Fairly high up, got an in at the top. Which is probably why they got him slugged up.”

“A Controller? In Weyland-Yutani?” Ford repeated. The Yeerk-Andalite war was only peripherally connected to the Siddiqui system, mostly by way of supplies bought cheap off the dark markets on Boukrouna, and so Ford hadn’t spared it a thought; there were so many wars being fought across so many dimensions. But if the Yeerks began infiltrating a corporation on the forefront of technological progress…

Cruiser shrugged. “Jao gao for them. All you need to know is, this is one mite too good to sit on. Da jeh da’s got the location of the kandrona that the slug is using to feed, and has a job planned to heist it, good and proper. You act as a direct contact two days after we take the thing? It’ll be desperate to make a deal.”

The phrasing made a prickle of unease spread across Ford’s skin, but he quashed the feeling ruthlessly. “And what’s my payment?” he said, refusing to back down.

“Well. Goin’ against an Andalite? Da jeh da ain’t expecting you to live to tell the tale,” Cruiser said, almost casually. “Fact is, you end up livin’, I may even let her believe you got all corpsified. I’ll square your debt to Desilijic, and you can disappear back to whatever guai dimension you crawled out of.”

There would be a catch, there was always a catch working for the Boukrouna gangs, but if there was even a slight possibility…

“Give me the data packet,” he said, and Cruiser grinned with too-large teeth.

\---

There’s no use trying to sneak up on a species that can look in four directions at once. A better strategy has to be found.

Smoothing his hair back into the dark headscarf he’d palmed from a stall, Ford made his way to the observation platform. His heart was hammering at the thought of what he was about to do, but he took a deep breath and grounded himself. No second chances.

He rushed to the edge of the platform and yelled, pleadingly, “Help me, please help me, my son is trapped!”

The Andalite glanced away from the PADD. <I am a security monitor,> he said, in the odd, slightly invasive thought-speak unique to the species.

“You must help me, I can’t lift the beams, you must help!” Ford insisted. The crowd around them was slowing, watching the spectacle unfold, and for once in his life he was grateful for the attention.

The Andalite was watching the crowd with his eyestalks still, and Ford could almost see the uncomfortable realization flashing across his mouthless face. The Andalite race, militarized as they were, prided themselves on their strong yet peaceful reputation, portraying themselves as heroes, as guardians of justice. Especially in a far-flung neutral system like Siddiqui, maintaining that reputation was of paramount importance, and the Yeerk wrapped around this Andalite’s brain knew it, knew that no _real_ Andalite would remain at their post rather than go to save a child.

<Lead me to the child and I will assist you,> he said, slightly awkwardly, and leapt from the platform to the ground, still clutching his PADD. Ford did his best not to smile, and instead nodded frantically and rushed away.

He lead the Andalite on a twisting path, cutting through alleys and backstreets until he reached the shell of a burnt out cantina, open to the sky with rubble still piled inside. “He’s in there, he’s under the rubble, I couldn’t move it,” he babbled. Without hesitation, the Andalite soared over the crumbling wall of the cantina –

– and activated the hard light entrapment field Ford had set up around the building.

“You’re not getting out of there any time soon, Fahtill,” Ford said, pulling the plain black control box from his pocket. “Or should I say, Sub-Visser Sixteen?”

Although Andalites possessed no mouths, Ford could practically _feel_ this one sneering at him. <How exemplary you are of your race, _human_ ,> he called, standing tall and haughty. <You capture and mock a Yeerk on the brink of starvation, and use trickery to do so. And for what? Petty revenge for your pitiful homeworld?>

So the Yeerks had reached the Earth of this dimension. “I have no loyalty there,” Ford said. Now that he looked, he could see the tremors in the Andalite’s hand, the wildness in the enormous green eyes. “I come to offer you a deal, on behalf of the da jeh da of the Jalloun Triad.” He paused. “The da jeh da, who is currently in possession of the kandrona you have been using for the past four months.”

The Andalite made a strange gasping noise that echoed in Ford’s head. <And so they send a weak, pathetic, _pitiful_ specimen like you to inform me,> he said. <I would rather starve than co-operate with such a group.>

“That is certainly an option,” Ford replied with a shrug. He casually touched the control box in his hand. “I can even adjust the parameters of the entrapment field and crush you like the slug you are, right now. Less painful than a slow starvation, or so I would think.”

The Andalite said nothing.

“Boukrouna has no alliance with the Andalites, or with Weyland-Yutani,” Ford said. “The da jeh da proposes nothing more than a mutual agreement, of sorts. For the privilege of continuing your mission with a limited protection from the Jalloun Triad, you would agree to give them the same data and technological access to Wey-Yu that you’re undoubtedly giving your Yeerk commanders. It’s simple enough.”

<A betrayal to the Empire,> the Andalite spat. Ford tapped the control box again.

“You can say no if you like,” he said mildly. The Andalite fumed in silence for several minutes, as Ford made a show of acting calm, relaxed – despite his heartbeat pounding at an improbable rate, despite the tension building in his shoulders and at his temples.

And then, finally, <Inform your _handlers_ to return the kandrona, > he said, <and we will make a deal.>

Ford nodded, then pulled the glitcher from another coat pocket and tapped a message onto it. After the _bing_ signaled the acknowledgement from Cruiser, he stashed it again and walked closer to the entrapment field. “The transport will arrive in the Morceli district tonight,” he said shortly. “Coordinates will be sent to your PADD closer to the arrival time.”

<The deal is done, human,> the Andalite snarled in return, stepping closer in a mirrored action. <Now free me!>

Ford smiled. “First,” he said, “You give _me_ some information.” He leaned in, until their faces were separated by scant inches and the hard light of the field. “What do you know of the Weyland-Yutani interdimensional scanner?”

He’d been expecting silence, or insults, or even lies. But the Andalite simply burst into peals of laughter, echoing in his head and making him grit his teeth. <A doomed project from its conception,> he told Ford gleefully. <Foolish to even imagine. It proved impossible to even begin _planning_ on a device of that magnitude. Unlimited dimensions, and they wish to be able to identify and catalogue each individual one? Utterly preposterous, and they knew it!>

His hand twitched against his thigh. He stilled it. “So it failed,” he said flatly.

<It never existed,> the Andalite said, suddenly harsh. Ford nodded and, carefully keeping himself contained, turned and walked away.

<Human! Free me from this entrapment field, or I will not fulfill our deal!>

“The field will degenerate in a few hours,” he called back without emotion. “Probably.”

 _It never existed_. He’d let himself have hope, let himself start to think again that he might finally be going home…

He ripped the scarf from his head and stuffed it in a pocket, then kept his hand there to hide the shaking.


End file.
